march,

march, month of spring fevers, month of madness, my progenitor, has asked me to send you (has sent me to ask you) to (would you?) marry the prince of rotting wood at the core of an apple (coruscating seed of life wormwood-bitter on the tongue ready to steal what you will give waste what you will yield)? march, year-waxing where the new challenges reveal their cusping heads rear back in fearsome youth burst their young leaves into air whether closed or open sky, march would ask you if you wanted a halfripe pomegranate, jewels formed and unshining as yet mossed over with the thick bunched fuzz of not-yet-come-into-size? A hickory-leaf, shed last spring as yet unrotted held safe by the hollow of a walnut tree trading preservation for preservation with squirrels and other crawling things full of holes but not yet dry? A hair, plucked from the maiden unmade in the depths of winter, spilling into the cold, held safe like sweet wine in the cool slippery dark who took nothing from her that did not come off easy (heat, hair, hole-water), of which only the hair lingered underfoot to the march of spring? (march, season of evidences thawing, scandals and revelations. month of what always was that winter hides.) march has offered these, and the hand of the apple-wormwoods, the ripening the bittering the plucking and trembling and faltering voices not yet screaming, the powers of betrayals sown and not yet harvested, resentments known and not yet avenged, schemes not yet written waiting for the madness to foment while the sun works on blinding the not yet mad as it advances through its half-power - but we must not look too far past, too far forward, for march conspires with its youngers but hates them too and betrays them too - I must not offend my greatest parent by overreaching - mother march father march sire and dam of mysterious leaves and grass and screaming birds, march asks you my love to marry an apple and eat its heart, and poison you to take its power, and poke a hole in your skin and let the bitterness leak out into the thawing snow where it will poison the deer. and I have come to you with this offer (I offered to come to you) my love this offer of my love this offer of an apple (do not eat the apple-)